Tom Corley spent many years observing the habits of the ultra rich and compared them to that of the poor. He wrote about it in his book “Rich Habits – The Daily Success Habits of Wealthy Individuals“. His belief is that if you adopt some of these wealthy habits, you can dramatically improve your life. That will then lead you to uncover more success or opportunities down the road.

One of his findings was that 63% of wealthy people listen to audiobooks during their commute to work. Only 5% of the poor do so. Since most people in Singapore use public transport and don’t need to concentrate on traffic signals and patterns, we can easily adopt this “rich habit”. And choose to learn rather than to be entertained with music, television dramas, or Candy Crush.

Most people already carry devices that can play audiobooks or display ebooks. But for those who do not, there are 4 libraries that lend out e-readers for free (Geylang East, Toa Payoh, Jurong West and Ang Mo Kio). To borrow them, you must make a reservation in advance (please call NLB to inquire).

NLB Overdrive

For those who prefer to use your own device, the NLB overdrive website makes it very convenient to search for and download ebooks and audiobooks. They have all sorts of books (and even some movies), from classics to best sellers, romance novels and cookbooks.

How to Borrow & Return

As long as you have a library card, you are allowed to borrow through the NLB overdrive website. You are only allowed to have 6 ebooks/audiobooks in your virtual bookshelf. But once these mp3/epub files are downloaded to you computer (mostly likely in the “My Documents/My Media” folder), you can choose to save a backup. Just make sure to put them into another folder.

After the files are downloaded, the books in your virtual bookshelf will remain there until they expire (in 3 weeks). Or until you “return” them by right-clicking on the title and selecting “delete”. This will delete the files from the “My Media” folder. But it will not delete any backup copy you have saved elsewhere.

This means that there is essentially no limit in the number of downloaded titles you have saved on your computer. Personally, I have downloaded and saved at least a dozen titles onto my computer without ever stepping foot inside any of the libraries. What’s even better is that there are no overdue books or late fees. The titles will automatically expire at the end of the lending period.

Just about everyone I know has a list of unread books that they will “eventually get to.” So why not tackle that must-read list, adopt a “rich person” habit, and learn something new?